Between the Ages

As I have been reading Richard Hays' The Moral Vision of the New Testament, I have enjoyed a couple of things at the outset:

1) Emphasis that Paul did not use the expectation of the end of the age to avoid formulating a specifically Christian ethic. If you read the pauline corpus, you find the mentionings of the returned presence of Jesus, and of the resurrection as calls to faithfully be part of the new covenant people now. That is, If we are going to see the fulfilled new heavens and new earth, then we should live like new creation today.

My hunch is that Paul will go back to prophetic literature especially to see the characteristics of new kingdom citizens.

But I have to read on both in Paul and in Hays.

2) A quote:

"If the church manifests the righteousness of God, it does so in just the way Jesus did: through suffering and death for the sake of others."

Luke